Postal systems have been designed and created to foster communication between individuals and business entities. Typical postal service communications have been in hard copy format; however, recently, electronic communication such as e-mail, internet, computer facsimile and digital telephony have become significant methods of communication. These communications have been mixed, forming what is known in the art of postal services as “hybrid mail”. One such example of hybrid mail is traditional facsimile in which hard copy and electronic messaging are combined. While electronic mail is typically faster and more economical than traditional mail, it proposes security concerns and legal concerns. Whereas traditional mail may be slower, it is more accessible to a broader range of individuals, offers proof necessary for many daily transactions and, in some instances, it is more effective than electronic mail. However, there are several occasions when the advantages of electronic communication and the advantages of traditional mail may be combined to provide a more effective communication solution.
To this end, postal systems have grown to provide a variety of value-added services associated with mailpiece delivery. One recognized purpose of sending a mail item is to solicit a reply message from a recipient or service provider. Such a reply message may be a response to the message contained in the mail item or a service type message having to do with sending and/or delivering and/or receiving the mail item by either the mail recipient or the service provider or both. The requirement to receive confirmation of mail acceptance and/or delivery is particularly common and normally addressed by certified, registered or insured mail. These types of mail are traditionally organized around a physical proof of acceptance and delivery, such as a physical receipt, which is signed by the service provider's clerks and/or the mail recipient and physically delivered to the mail originator (mailer).
The postal services incur considerable cost for such value-added service, and the mailer is charged a fee that is significant in comparison to the cost of regular delivery of the mail item. For example, when a mailer requests a return receipt, the recipient of the mail signs a card stating that the mail has been received. This card is physically delivered back to the original mailer as acknowledgement of mail receipt from the recipient. Such physical proofs of acceptance and delivery are economically inefficient and time-consuming. Most, if not all, postal systems require individual, manual handling of special services mail. These systems are considerably more expensive than automated mail processing systems which are based on machine readability of information present on mail items.
As of 1998, almost 20% of the population in the United States and other industrialized countries, in general, have access to electronic mail via Internet. Even a higher number of mailers use facsimile regularly. These numbers are expected to grow dramatically. Although such electronic communications provide speed and efficiency over the physical delivery of mail, there is no indication that such electronic communications will replace the physical delivery of mail. Heretofore, such electronic communications have been an alternate form of communication to the physical delivery of mail.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/339,768, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, discloses value-added services based on electronic confirmation of service for only the mail items communicated between the original mailer and the originating post office. It was envisioned that mail items would be of an international nature, yet the performance of special services would continue to be directly communicated between the mailer and the originating post office. This application discloses the concept of electronic confirmation of delivery in the preferred embodiment which involves printing by the mailer his/her electronic address (where he/she would like to have confirmation to be sent electronically) on the mail item itself. This electronic address may be encrypted in the digital postal mark, printed in a plain text form, or in a machine readable format in such a manner that this electronic address can be captured effectively and reliably from the mail item by any convenient data capture device, e.g., optical scanner. In an alternate embodiment, unique mailer identification (which is typically printed in the digital postage marks or other proof of postage payment indicia) can serve as a pointer to a database of mailer's registered electronic addresses, and the electronic address for confirmation can be retrieved from such a database. Also, the electronic address would typically have to be pre-registered for a mailer to enjoy value-added services and would not work with mailers who prefer to use stamps and not register with postal authorities for digital postage payment evidencing solutions such as PC-based and other digital meters. However, the system of the present invention would work with any method of payment.
Specifically, Digital Postage Marks (DPM) (a.k.a. digital indicia, a.k.a. information based indicia) are computerized information printed or otherwise attached to a mail item to provide evidence of payment to a verification authority (e.g., the United States Postal Service). This type of information, generally referred to as postal data, preferably includes identification of the metering device (or licensee) responsible for the payment, unique identification of mail item, value of various accounting registers, location of the mail deposit/mailer's account, postage value, and may include other desired information. Such information is typically protected by a cryptographically generated validation code known as CPVC (Cryptographic Postage Validation Code). Another way to protect DPM is by supplying the verification authority with the value of the validation code (Postage Validation Code or PVC) prior to mail submission as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,612,889, assigned to the assignee of this application. This means that a mail item is sent by a mailer in one country to a recipient in another country, and the sender would like to request performance of a value-added service, for example, confirmation that the mail item was delivered to a mail box of the recipient or actually received by the recipient or a member of the household of that recipient. This also contemplates a broad variety of desired services and confirmations. Typically, in this case, the mail item itself must be handled by several postal operators or carriers including at least the carrier of first handling (typically the postal operator of the country where mailpiece originates) and the carrier of the last handling (typically the postal operator of the country where the mailpiece is delivered to the recipient) and possibly carriers operating in other intermediate countries.
The problem remains in international postal delivery that the postal operator of the first handling may not want to share electronic addresses of its customers with other postal operators (e.g., in the destination country). Sharing of the electronic address, in turn, reveals the first handling postal authority's customer list to subsequent handling postal authorities, who could then usurp the customers and maintain direct communication with the original mailer. The subsequent postal authorities could circumvent the need to communicate through the first handling postal authority to the original mailer and, thus, steal the first handling postal authority's customers. This would result in loss of revenue related to the value-added services provided by the original postal authority and any revenue related to services provided which uses the customer list.
In this case, the postal operator of the originating country would prefer that electronic confirmation concerning a given mail item be sent to the postal operator of the first handling, not directly to the original mailer of the mail item. This postal operator then may electronically forward the confirmation to the original sender of the mail item, thus protecting valuable and confidential electronic addresses of its customers. The system of the present invention provides the ability to satisfy this need of postal operators working in an open and competitive environment.